AUTHOR: Kashmir Hill and Surya Mattu

Last year, we launched an investigation into how Facebook’s People You May Know tool makes its creepily accurate recommendations. By November, we had it mostly figured out: Facebook has nearly limitless access to all the phone numbers, email addresses, home addresses, and social media handles most people on Earth have ever used. That, plus its deep mining of people’s messaging behaviour on Android, means it can make surprisingly insightful observations about who you know in real life – even if it’s wrong about your desire to be “friends” with them on Facebook. Read More >>